Every catch can’t be the ‘big one’

Saturday

Mar 23, 2013 at 12:05 AM

The new state record striped bass looks ridiculously big. You have to wonder how this freak of nature survived undetected for so long. If the guy had lost the fish and tried to tell about it, he’d be called a degenerate liar.

By Robert DeWittOutdoors Writer

The new state record striped bass looks ridiculously big. You have to wonder how this freak of nature survived undetected for so long. If the guy had lost the fish and tried to tell about it, he’d be called a degenerate liar.My friend Steve Patridge spends hours on Smith Lake hoping for a big striper to bite. He has all the equipment and electronics, everything you need to corral a big striped bass. And I don’t even think James Bramlett of Dora was even fishing for striped bass when he caught his 69-pound, 9.8-ounce record. It may even be an International Game Fish Association record for landlocked stripers.George Perry was just out for a morning of fun and maybe a meal when the Georgian caught the world record largemouth bass on the only lure he owned. He doesn’t even have a picture of it. Some people question whether the fish was even real.The dimensions recorded for Perry’s fish aren’t typical of a Florida strain largemouth, the only kind believed to be capable of reaching the 22-pound, 4-ounce record weight. And the fish would long have been off the bed so it wouldn’t have been carrying the eggs that many people believe are necessary to push the fish’s weight up to record heights.They’re right. I don’t think it was a Florida strain largemouth. I think it was an oversized northern strain freak, longer and skinnier than the stubby bulging-bellied Florida bass that have almost reached the record weight. You can say that’s impossible, but that’s what makes it a freak and thus, a trophy.I set my own personal largemouth bass record 35 years ago Monday. March 25, 1978, was cold and blustery. In fact, it was exactly like the day four years and 10 days earlier when I’d caught the fish that stood as my own personal record, 6½ pounds, at the time.I was fishing from the same boat at about the same time of day and threw my plastic worm in the same spot, a little to the northwest of a brick pump house that sat on the edge of the pond in Greene County. The fish hit it on the fall, just as it had four years earlier, and I could tell it was big by the way it inhaled the worm with a sudden pull.For a moment, everything was so much the same as it had been four years earlier that it just seemed too storybook. But the fish jumped and I saw that it was fact and not fantasy. I had stout line and a stiff Lew’s Speed Stick worm rod and there was little drama to the fight.We left immediately after my father netted it. We had pictures taken and froze the fish whole. It’s increasingly ragged remains still adorn the wall of our study.Even in a day when keeping a bass wasn’t equated with pedophilia or cannibalism, I regretted keeping and killing the fish. I’m a great believer in keeping and eating fish, including bass (I hear the cries of “heretic” even now). But I didn’t eat this fish and I felt bad about killing it.I caught my first bass on rod and reel in that pond when I was 6 years old and I had fished there all through my youth. I thought about the likelihood that the old sow, fully 26-inches long and 8 pounds, had been there through many of my fishing trips. Maybe I had tossed her back when she was a half-pounder.Somewhere along the line, I had changed my style of fishing and was trying strictly for large fish in the deep parts of ponds. I had ceased to fish for bass and had started fishing for big bass. After landing that fish, I was left wondering, to what end?I know that I stopped caring about catching big fish right then. In the intervening 35 years, I’ve fished for keepers. It’s sort of like shooting mallard drakes. I’m happy to catch a big fish just as I’m happy to kill a greenhead. But I’m happy to catch smaller keepers, too, just as I’m tickled to death to shoot gadwalls, wood ducks and especially green winged teal.In the same way, I don’t go trophy deer hunting. Once a man kills and mounts a deer of a particular size, does it make any sense to mount one smaller? It does to some people. They belong to clubs where the rule is “don’t shoot it unless you’re going to mount it.” It would be hard for me to get excited about mounting a 160-class 10-point after hanging a 180-class 12-point on the wall. But knowing you can’t pull the trigger unless you top that takes some fun out of hunting.A friend of mine who has put a lot of thought into deer hunting believes we would all be happier if we just went hunting, felt free to shoot a buck if we saw one and wanted to kill it and had fun.I know I’m a happier fisherman when I just catch the fish that bite, keep what I want and throw back the little ’uns. If the one on the end of the line happens to be big, I’m just that much happier. Trophies are trophies because they are unusual and unexpected. But the absence of the big one won’t spoil my day.

Reach Robert DeWitt at robert.dewitt@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0203.

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